Sports notebook

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, October 10, 2001

-- Texans football coach
Dom Capers
and the Texans cheerleaders will headline the
Touchdown Club
's galleryfurniture.com NFL Night, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17th at the JW Marriott, 5150 Westheimer. Capers will speak and take questions from the crowd, while the cheerleaders will autograph their inaugural poster. Also speaking will be former NFL referee

Red Cashion
. For tickets, which are $35 each, call the TD Club message line at 281-754-4867, or go to the club's Web site at
www.touchdownclub.org
, and click on the "tickets" icon.

WINTER SPORTS Races will go on

-- World Cup ski races in North America will proceed as scheduled despite military action in Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Guenther Hujara

, racing director of the international ski federation, dismissed rumors that the races would be called off. Aspen, Colo., will hold men's and women's races Nov. 22-26. Women will compete at Lake Louise, Alberta, Nov. 29-Dec. 1, and men will ski at Beaver Creek, Colo., Dec. 1-2.

Skaters pulled out

-- Four U.S. skaters were withdrawn from a competition in Austria this week because of the military action in Afghanistan. Singles skaters
Amber Corwin
and
Justin Dillon
and ice dancers
Kimberly Navarro
and
Robert Shmalo
will not compete at the Karl Schafer Memorial in Vienna, which begins today.

Lemieux to miss game

BASEBALL Bonds is Player of the Week

-- Not that he needs another honor at the moment, but
Barry Bonds
has one -- National League Player of the Week. In the week of Oct. 1-7, the
Giants
slugger hit homers Nos. 71 and 72 off
Chan Ho Park
of the Dodgers to break
Mark McGwire's
record of 70 set three years ago. No. 73 came on the final day of the season.

Ball loser hires lawyer

--
Barry Bonds'
historic 73rd home run ball landed in
Alex Popov's
glove Sunday at Pacific Bell Park. But he wasn't the man who went home with it. And that's why Popov now has a lawyer. The Berkeley man is claiming that the ball is his -- even though
Major League Baseball
declared that
Patrick Hayashi
of Campbell, Calif., was the rightful owner of the souvenir that could be worth $1 million. Popov and his attorney,
Rosemary McCarthy
, contend a videotape shot by a KNTV-Ch. 11 crew standing next to Popov bolsters their claim the ball really belongs to him.

Bonds owes ex-wife half value of homes

-- A California appeals court has ruled that
Barry Bonds
owes his ex-wife half the value of three homes they owned together. The appeals court was left to resolve the property dispute after the state
Supreme Court
ruled last August the couple's prenuptial agreement was valid even though only Bonds had a lawyer present when it was signed. Bonds' ex-wife,
Sun
, had no lawyer when she signed the prenuptial agreement on the eve of their 1988 Las Vegas wedding. In 1999, a state appeals court ruled it was unlikely a trial court could find the agreement valid. The high court overturned that decision.

GOLF Burke defeated

--
Sherry Herman
, of Marlboro, N.J., beat former Curtis Cup player
Robin Burke
of Houston 6 and 5 to advance to the quarterfinals of the
U.S. Women
's Mid-Amateur in Eureka, Mo.

COMMITMENTS Loney to Baylor

-- Elkins senior pitcher
James Loney
, who has twice led the Knights to the Class 5A state baseball tournament, has orally committed to play for Baylor. Loney, a two-time All-District 20-5A selection as well as a two-time All-Greater Houston and All-State pick, has 21 career wins for Elkins and has notched 100-plus strikeouts in each of the past two seasons. When not serving as an ace lefthanded starter, Loney hit .398 while playing first base for Elkins, the two-time defending Region III champions.